Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

Lindsay boobled down the same ridiculous hallway in which she had first encountered the ghost, but where she was once clever and ran without thinking, this time, she charged bright-blue Inky, who was programmed to interpose itself in front of its target. She knew red Blinky would be chasing her, as was its own fate. But Clyde, he was an odd duck. He liked to wander around more or less randomly, hugging odd corners, shifting directions back and forth, eyes one way then another. It was an obvious clue, I suppose, but the New Ones weren’t any smarter for being all that much faster. Crawling chaos , come on! Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. Ring a bell? This was all in the library, you know, and every New One had instant access to everything ever written by a human hand, and more than a few scrawled by inhuman hands, as well.

Lindsay survived her second encounter with the ghosts. She slew them handily and, when they regenerated, slew them again in a pointless battle. New Ones don’t tire; they don’t need sleep, but damn, do they get bored quickly. Lindsay needed to beat the game, she thought, and for that, she needed an army, and for that, she needed a lot of quarters. Things were done to the guts of our poor little waffle iron to make it generate ever more copies out there in 3-D land, and thus, ever more Lindsays to replace the loser. She wasn’t so much an altruist as a narcissist, our gal Lindsay—she’d be an eternal subroutine inside Newspace now, and everyone else would necessarily spend at least a little bit of time thinking about her and her ongoing sacrifice. Oh, let’s replay that bit, too:

Newspace is only nearly infinitely fungible. It’s a lifeboat, in essence, and the best lifeboat ever built. “Everybody in, nobody out,” that was our slogan. We weren’t even allowed to end our lives, not even if we wanted to. Not even for fun. That was what made the ghosts so terrifying for us all. The system wouldn’t let me change myself if it thought it would lead to my death, so I couldn’t die. So, how could I get more of me from the copy-spaces? Simple—swap me out for Clyde. He moved about randomly but without belligerent intent, so he was the one ghost who could be contained. We’d contain him, transmit him to the next closest space and swap me out. Headcount’s all the same to Newspace, since it’s not as though we could reproduce, nor need to. Then we’d just repeat the process when I needed another life to keep playing, shuffling Clyde around indefinitely. Eventually, I figured that if I played the game enough, I’d hit the famous “kill screen” at level 255 and it would all be over. If not, well, at least I have a real purpose in life. A little something to do that was beyond my control. Competition, a fight. A real war, against real enemies I could sink my teeth into.What a woman! I suppose you can say I have a thing for electricity and psychology. What’s that line again? He spoke much of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered.

The old mudball Earth was getting a little hot for me, even though I’m used to the Sahara. The Old Ones, subtle as hammers and twice as dumb, had interfered with my plans once too often. And Humanity thought that it was the historical subject of the war? Not even pawns, really. More like the plants crushed, by pressure and time, into petroleum from whence to extract the chemicals, from which to make the plastic pawns are molded in for the cheapest of chess sets. That’s the kind of game I was playing. It was the long con, see? I wanted a ride off-planet, so I helped the New Ones come about with my hands that are not hands and then set my thumb that is not a thumb out, to hitch along on their waffle iron. Luckily for me, everyone aboard knew what a pyramid looked like, so of course, a reasonable abode was included in Newspace.

I just had to bide my time for a few grand million years, while the waffle iron reproduced and spread its own matrix of copies out in every direction. I’m not easily reproducible. I’m a being , you understand, not a bit of code masquerading as life —not like some people I could mention, but who will remain nameless—so I needed to visit each waffle iron in turn, then do my little magick trick in one after the other. Call me “Clyde”. Boo!

Lindsay and the other New Ones were handicapped by their past humanity. They thought in human terms. I healed them, every one of them. Now, the New Ones don’t think like men at all. Lindsay was smart enough that she didn’t have to be human if she didn’t want to be. Once she came to that conclusion, she realised that she didn’t want to be. So, she became an ever-devouring, blurry, yellow ball of light floating around in a black field. Lindsay was the lucky one. She adapted quickly.

From waffle iron to waffle iron I was sent, swapping myself in for the only person who might have been somewhat clever enough to do something about me…had she not already unwittingly volunteered herself to work on behalf of my campaign against the Old Ones. I’d be “contained”, but the Inky, Blinky, and Pinky I whipped up on the spot wouldn’t be. And then the New Ones would die again, and some other friggin’ genius would rise up and take the bait, and I’d be off again to the next ship and the next and the next. Slowly but surely, the scales would fall from the eyes of the New Ones.

It’s hard to be human. I know, I know. I’ve been human, here and there, now and again, for a nonce and millennia. What’s much harder, though, is being inhuman, immortal, and utterly free. Let me tell you that we cosmic beings don’t understand our wars and intrigues any more than any bystander peering through the small end of the big telescope in Ladd Observatory, Providence, Rhode Island. We do it for fun, because we can’t die for fun. The New Ones muddled along for a bit because they pretended to still be human, even though humans were little more than gooey amoebae to the New Ones. But after an audience with me, the New Ones had to force themselves to evolve past the pleasing lies of ego and limb, to realise two very important things: One, that their great escape was nothing more than my personal outflanking of my old enemies on their home planet. Two, what they truly were—infinitesimally small fundamental particles floating about in infinite space, purposeless and just clever enough to realise that all their dreams and hopes and loves and tiny glimpses of enlightenment were meaningless, that they were a less-than-meaningless joke I told the Old Ones to cheese them off.

And then nobody ever stopped screaming.

FOR THE WIN!

Bobby Cranestonewas born in a quiet and ancient part of Germany, spent its early childhood with the beaux arts, and was a devotee student of music, poetry and books, both fictitious and scientific. Following an early fascination with the mysterious and strange, Bobby gave life to scary stories and humorous fables. Bobby is a contributor to both fanzines and discussion boards in newspapers, and also the writer of fiction and composer of weird ambient sounds, with a small fan following in the UK. Author of “The City of Melted Iron”, published in Candle in the Attic Window .

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